Brand Parachutes
Recent articles in Director magazine have lauded the development of a personal brand as a method of preserving reputation – supposedly when one element is compromised, the others maintain image and integrity.
This may be the case, although it’s doubtful that the charisma of a CEO, or their devotion to other causes will compensate an irate traveller for a late-running train and all its inconveniences. Indeed, persistent failure to deliver a company brand promise may well damage the personal brand and reputation of the CEO with implications both for the organisation and the individual.
And customers have their preferences too. The impact of a disaster in one characteristic of a personal brand (say an unwarranted attack on a competitor) may be significant to a customer, employee or any other stakeholder – or not. It would depend on what’s actually important to these stakeholders. Few choose to buy – or indeed, NOT to buy – from a company because of the image of a CEO – they’re interested in the brand of the product or service and what it delivers or in the image of a company as a whole. Even fewer would invest in a company because of the image of its CEO, if it wasn’t backed up by performance.
So, not only is there little to guide leaders looking to develop personal brands whether a particular element is more important than another, all of this is academic if the brand is not supported by action – the company reputation will still be in danger.
A brand can provide a parachute for your company’s reputation but all the panels need to be firmly sewn together if it is to prevent your organisation plummeting to the ground. A leader’s personal brand therefore needs to be aligned (or sewn together) with the company brand if the messages are going to be unified, both internally and externally. The personal brand of the CEO may be an important part of the parachute – but it is only one part.
So where the personal brand of leaders will help to protect the reputation of the organisation is where it supports and extends the brand promise of the whole company. It’s only here where the reputation of the company can be cushioned against mistakes, human frailties and deliberate mischief – when the CEO, because of their personal brand values, is moved to make things happen in their company to make the messages real.
Because regardless, few reputations will survive if brand promises are not
honoured. Research has shown that broken promises are the fastest way to lose loyalty – whether it be that of employees, customers or the City. So in all cases, what you say you do should be what you actually do – or authentic communication.
The panels of your brand parachute should therefore not only be about what you say you do – common sense suggests they should include your ACTUAL delivery, the ACTUAL experience of your product or service. Broken promises are the “rips” in the silk.
A good brand parachute can often mean that your reputation can float more gently to the ground than it would otherwise have done when compromised, giving you time to repair the damage.
However, common sense should tell you that rips can only be repaired so many times before serious questions will be asked by your customers and other stakeholders. Consistent damage would indicate that your organisation needed to look more fundamentally at what is preventing it from delivering the brand promise.
This might be anything from the wrong messages altogether, to the supply chain being managed badly, to rewarding the wrong things in your people.
Your parachute needs to be carefully maintained if it is to provide you with years of good service – and while damage in one panel on one occasion may not prove fatal to your reputation, repeated rips in the silk even when repaired will weaken your brand parachute over time. Can you afford to jump? Or will your parachute fail this time?